City: Zürich, Switzerland
Venue: Hallenstadion
Date: February 4, 1979

Setlist:
We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, Fat Bottomed Girls, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Mustapha (intro), Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


         
                               

After the second song Brian May greets the audience, as has become the custom: "Good evening, people of Zurich. Thank you. We're gonna do you a concentrated dose of Queen music tonight. We'd like to start with an old song called Somebody To Love."

Freddie, before the medley: "From fat bottomed girls to a really nasty-looking man. He's from A Night At The Opera. You know what he's called? He's called Death On Two Legs!"

I'm In Love With My Car from this show made it to the official Live Killers release.

There is a lot of extra analog delay on the vocals and Roger's whistle in the last chorus of Get Down Make Love, as the front of house guy didn't switch it off in time.

Brian is a little adventurous in the last 30 seconds of You're My Best Friend.

Brian doesn't do the band intro after Love Of My Life. He simply states, "Getting back to the group format, this is a song called '39."

According to Greg Brooks' Queen Live book the band skipped out on Sheer Heart Attack in Zurich, but this is not the case, as confirmed by Daniele Semenzato, who attended the show. Queen encored with the song every night on the Jazz tour.

Another fan recalls: "We were really loud just like Queen which sometimes sounded as a heavy metal band that night. This was my second Queen gig (first being in June 77 as Earls Court in London). Both were absolutely mindblowing but Zurich was more direct and less sophisticated. Despite all the madness and the crowd cheering, scarf-waving and singing wildly and Roger singing his lungs out in the chorus [of We Are The Champions], Freddie's voice was quite in a sorry state by the end of the show. Not that we cared anyway. Even an average Queen show (and this wasn't average by any means) is a state-of-the-art gig for any other band."

This article (1, 2, 3) on the show also confirms that the encores were performed as usual.

The second set of photos above were taken by Gabriele Ansaloni.

There are some more great pictures in this second article (1, 2).

Footage of this show popped up on a Swiss TV station's website for the first time in 2018. Most of We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions was shown, as well as some dressing room footage where Roger Taylor tears up an English music paper. It was first broadcast three days after the show.


Recording length: 7 minutes (1 LP, incomplete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Absolutely Rare" LP

Track listing:
It's Late


This compilation bootleg released on vinyl in 1992 included one song from the Zurich audience tape. The liner notes incorrectly state it to be from 1978.

The given dates of the live material on the CD version below are mostly accurate, except for this song from Zurich and Not Fade Away being listed as London 1980 (actually from 1984). The intro to Ogre Battle listed as a studio take is from the third BBC session (recorded on 12-3-73, but not included on the 1989 "Live At The Beeb" and 1995 "Live At The BBC" official releases because the master tape was allegedly damaged or lost; it is actually two takes of the intro recorded consecutively, and the latter was included on the 2016 "On Air" release after the master tape was finally found). The "Millionaire Waltz" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" studio takes are fakes in mono sound with a lot of added tape hiss.


Recording length: 7 minutes (1 CD, incomplete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Absolutely Rare" silver

     
Track listing:
It's Late


This is a 1992 CD re-release of the vinyl title of the same name, but with a different cover. It is musically identical.


Recording length: 84 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > Master Cassette > Cassette (x) > WAV > FLAC level 8
Track listing:
We Will Rock You (fast) [cut], Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, Fat Bottomed Girls, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race [cut], I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Mustapha (intro) [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball [cut], Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive [cut]


This is one of the best audience tapes of 1979.

An alternate source of the complete show exists (or at least, once existed).




Previous Concert

Next Concert

Back to 1979 Concerts

Home